Apple announced less than 24 hours ago the new high quality Apple Music, with Dolby Atmos sound and without quality loss, even with a High Resolution option. What role do your speakers and headphones play in this new service?
Apple Music will offer us, starting in June, the possibility of listening to music without loss, what is called "lossless audio", a format that requires more bandwidth, more storage but in return offers us higher quality. We will even have the option of "High Resolution", which will be a format that will respect the music as it was recorded in the studio, without any compression. It will also enhance the listening experience with more immersive Dolby Atmos sound. We can listen to this music on our iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac, but how is it going to reach our ears? What role will the AirPods and the HomePod and HomePod Mini play?
HomePod and HomePod mini
Apple speakers have a sound quality beyond any doubt, yes, each in its category. Apple ditched the HomePod a few weeks ago, without announcing a replacement, and the HomePod mini is being a top seller for its excellent value for money. Many of the owners of these devices were impatient for the release of high-quality music on Apple Music, so our HomePods will sound even better than they do today, but the reality is that we are going to be half.
Both HomePod and HomePod mini are compatible with Dolby Atmos sound. If we already enjoyed great sound in our room, especially when we put two HomePods together and created a stereo pair, now with Dolby Atmos sound the sound experience will be much better. But music if quality loss is another matter, because the HomePod and HomePod mini will not be able to play it.
Apple has confirmed that its speakers will not be compatible with Apple Music Lossless, that is, we will have to continue listening to music in compressed format, as before. The motives? We do not know them at this time. It seems difficult to think that the "big" HomePod is unable to reproduce that music by hardware, and if it were a software problem it could be solved with an update. Maybe the HomePod's processor is too dated for HiFi music? Well, but at least I could play it in CD quality, something is something. the fact is that Apple's answer has been clear and concise: they are not compatible.
AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max
With Apple headphones it is the same as with HomePods. All AirPods and some Beats headphones will support Dolby Atmos and spatial sound, the only requirement is that they have the H1 or W1 processor, already incorporated in the latest generations of headphones. But when we talk about lossless sound, they are also left out of the game.
It was something we expected from the AirPods and AirPods Pro, since Bluetooth cannot transmit sound without loss, but the AirPods Max has the option of being used with cable, and there was the hope of many. Apple again throws us a jug of cold water by confirming that it is technically not possible, due to the limitations of the Lightning connector of the headphones.
A new service without hardware for him
There is therefore the curious situation that Apple has launched a service "that changes music forever" without Apple users being able to fully enjoy it. We will be able to enjoy Dolby Atmos sound, but we have no way of enjoying lossless sound, with the new ALAC codec, in any Apple speaker or headphone. It really is, to say the least, quite puzzling.
That this happens does not make our HomePods or our AirPods worse. If you were happy with them, you will continue to be just as happy or even more, thanks to Dolby Atmos that you didn't have before and now you are, and also for the same price. It's ridiculous that yesterday you thought that your AirPods Max were the worst, and that today you suddenly woke up thinking that they are garbage. But it is still strange the situation that headphones of more than € 600 are not capable of playing the best Apple Music music, or at least the second best music.
How are we going to listen to music in High Resolution?
Apple has announced its new service, it has told us which devices are compatible and which are not ... but what it has not told us is how we are going to listen to music without loss of quality. We will have 20 million songs at launch, 75 million by the end of the year ... but how do we listen to them?. Without a jack connector on the iPad and iPhone, and with the AirPods and HomePod out of the game, the feeling is that they have taught us a candy that we cannot eat. We will have to wait for Apple to offer us more information, after all it has not even been launched yet.
